smartphone menu rubriken

Stagnation Instead of Innovation

Libya has one of the lowest levels of illiteracy in North Africa, and thousands of students graduate from Libyan universities every year. For Libyan journalist Mustafa Fetouri, however, the country puts too much emphasis on outdated curricula and learning by rote when it should be encouraging creativity in its education system and research sector

Falling educational standards: Libya's education system is suffering not only from the lack of a proper education policy but also from spending cuts

​​ The Libyan capital of Tripoli is home to more than fifty private universities and colleges; there is, however, only one state university and one semi-state-owned academy for postgraduate studies.

According to a UNESCO report from 2007, Libya ranks 113th in the world in terms of illiteracy levels. And although Libya's illiteracy rate of 17.6 percent is one of the lowest in North Africa, and although it has the third highest number of people in higher education of any Arab country apart from Jordan and Palestine, this oil-rich, sparsely populated country has a real problem when it comes to its education system – and that is its low quality.

In the 1970s and 1980s close monitoring and farsightedness were the defining features of Libya's education policy. Free state and compulsory education for all children under 15 years of age were introduced. Parents who did not send their children to school were prosecuted – as indeed is still the case. Over the last two decades, however, the standard of education has steadily declined.

Privatization as an emergency solution

The decline in educational standards is really down to the lack of a proper education policy and the spending cuts in education introduced in response to the economic embargo against Libya that followed the Lockerbie bombing of 1988. The high turnover of education ministers has also had a negative effect on the system and been a destabilizing factor.

Quantity not quality: despite the fact that Libya has many privately run educational institutions, most of them are not recognised by the office of quality control affiliated to the Libyan education ministry

​​ One might expect the increase in private educational institutions at all levels to have been a good thing, but in fact, the opposite has been the case. The office of quality control affiliated to the Libyan education ministry recognises fewer than five private universities across the country; none of the others meet the quality standards.

One must also realise that very many of these private educational institutions did not come into existence as a result of any liberalization of education or higher education policies, but purely as a response to emergency. As the state revenues, which were heavily dependent on oil, began to decline as a result of the fall in oil prices in the 1980s, the Libyan government attempted to decrease the consequent financial burden on itself by a policy of privatization.

The vicious circle of poor education and a weak economy

Libya is thus very similar to other Arab countries with regard to its universities. The essence of the problem is the poor quality of their education. Though there are in fact many university graduates and highly qualified people, it is also they who make up the majority of the estimated 20 percent unemployed, most of those out of work being under 30. It is a situation loaded with contradiction and one that can be attributed to the poor quality of an education that employs outdated curricula and painstaking rote memorization in hermetically sealed classrooms.

In recent times, Libya's head of state, Muammar Gaddafi, has focussed only sporadically on the education of his people

​​ The disastrous consequences of this drum-it-into-them system, which characterises all areas of education in Libya, only really becomes visible at university level. The universities provide a level of education that tends to resemble something one might expect from a poor quality college evening class rather than a centre of academic excellence dedicated to research and societal progress.

Academic research, as such, simply does not exist. The result of this state of affairs is that students without intellectual curiosity or initiative are completely dependent on their teachers; the vicious circle of drummed-in education in anti-research, rote-learning-based, curricula remains unbroken. Only rarely are experimentation and creativity encouraged.

The entrepreneurial spirit that is so much a part of universities and research in Europe and the US – one need look no further than Google, the most famous Internet search engine, which was founded by students – hardly exists here.

Educational isolation rather than innovation

The gap between education and the labour market has become particularly apparent since the advent of economic liberalization in the early 1990s. Back then, foreign companies flooded into Libya. They were soon to discover, however, that their investments were not paying off; the employment market could not supply a sufficient number of suitably qualified personnel in spite of the large numbers of assorted graduates being turned out.

Inventive, short-term solutions, such as retraining and further training, were essential. Since they were not integrated into the long-term educational planning, however, those educational institutions below university level continued to struggle with the same problems they faced 20 years earlier.

"The entrepreneurial spirit that is so much a part of universities and research in Europe and the US hardly exists here," writes Mustafa Fetouri

​​The education policies in the region, as exemplified by Libya, also suffer from some very basic conceptual problems. Above all, what is missing is a comprehensive national strategy for a new educational policy. With regard to curricula, in particular, there has been no attempt to learn from the experiences of countries whose educational systems are further advanced than Libya's.

On the contrary, the trend has been to become increasingly inward-looking and isolationist. Modern technology is too rarely used – computers are hardly to be found in the schools and are severely underutilized in the universities. Inventiveness and inquiry are the obvious casualties of this lack of encouragement for independent academic research.

New and rapidly developing academic methods from abroad, such as practical applications from the fields of engineering, computer sciences and medicine, are not being "Arabised". In other words, they are not being linguistically or culturally adapted to local conditions and introduced into the country. Ultimately, this has led to a situation where Arab students abroad are extremely creative and innovative while their counterparts at home are exactly the opposite.

Mustafa Fetouri is a Libyan journalist and head of the Libyan Academy for Higher Education in Tripoli.

Editor: Aingeal Flanagan/Qantara.de

Qantara.de

Political Reforms in LibyaRevolutionary Rhetoric or Radical Change?
Last year, Colonel Gaddafi announced his intention to modernise the Libyan "state of the masses". At the recent General People's Congress, however, some of his decisions were rescinded, leaving widespread confusion among Libyans and experts alike. Beat Stauffer has the details

Gaddafi's Big Power Politics in AfricaErratic Political Manoeuvring
In order to shore up his influence in Africa, Colonel Gaddafi has in the past fanned the flames of conflict and acted as a peace mediator as he felt inclined. Interestingly, the Libyan leader could bring stability to the region without losing any of his influence. James M. Dorsey has the details

Young People in the Arab WorldA Blank Space on the Academic Map
A new anthology outlining the current status of research into young people in the Arab world concludes that neither western nor Arab scholars have comprehensive and meaningful research material to work with. Julia Gerlach reports

DossierDemocracy and Civil Society
The question of Islam's compatibility with democracy is often posed in the West. For many intellectuals in predominantly Islamic countries, however, it is not faith that prevents democratization of their societies. They tend to lay the blame instead at the door of the ruling parties - their fear of losing power, their corruption and nepotism

Facebook, Twitter, Google+

In submitting this comment, the reader accepts the following terms and conditions: Qantara.de reserves the right to edit or delete comments or not to publish them. This applies in particular to defamatory, racist, personal, or irrelevant comments or comments written in dialects or languages other than English. Comments submitted by readers using fantasy names or intentionally false names will not be published. Qantara.de will not provide information on the telephone. Readers' comments can be found by Google and other search engines.

Partner Organizations

Facebook

Most Recent Photo Essay

According to a WHO report from December 2014, more than one million Syrians have been wounded in the Syrian civil war since the spring of 2011. Some 45 per cent of the injured are children and women; about 10–15 per cent have suffered amputations or disabilities. Daily shelling is the main cause of their injuries. From spring 2014 to early 2015, photographer Kai Wiedenhofer travelled through towns, villages and refugee camps in Jordan and Lebanon, taking pictures of those left scarred by the conflict. He says that by showing the genuine aftermath of this conflict and photographing its victims in a dignified manner, his intention was to raise support for people who are really in need and whose sufferings do not end with the war. "In all my time as a photographer," he says, "I have never witnessed such grave atrocities." All photos in this gallery are by Kai Wiedenhofer